Rui Carmo
It’s been five years since I wrote about my time at college, and although my writing output has since lessened somewhat, I would be remiss if I didn’t post a few short notes on yesterday’s event, which commemorated the 25th anniversary of our college degree with an all-day meetup at IST.
Although I wasn’t able to attend for the whole day (Murphy’s Law wiped out my schedule for the afternoon, so I missed the closing ceremony), it was a great way to get back in touch with old friends, and I had a lot of fun over dinner comparing notes with one of our professors (as it turns out, selling early AI solutions has a lot in common with proving the value of machine learning these days).
Some key takeaways:
- Folk who graduated from LEIC (in any of its variants, from the original 5-year degree to the Bologna variant and the current masters degree) are just about everywhere.
- Many kicked off successful businesses, others are heading local offices for multinationals, and a sizable number of them are simply… abroad.
- It’s amazing how we can pick up conversations where we left off years ago. We’re all still a pretty close knit bunch, even though over time we branched off into different clusters of folk.
- There’s still a lot to be done where it regards making ends meet between academic curricula and market requirements. There’ll always be a gap, but the consensus seems to be that regardless of actual curricula, folk who go through the current mix are able to get up to speed on anything.
- There’s a widespread consensus among both alumni and faculty that we should do this kind of thing more often (with the usual jabs “appointing” people to do so for next year).
In retrospect, I should have stepped up with a slide deck and talked about my own experiences – I certainly have enough entertaining stories to tell, and there aren’t that many of us who’ve gone through the telco grinder, with or without my unique talent for getting myself into trouble…